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Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

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Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#361

Post by tgma »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #344
tgma wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Just choose to buy the way you wish to. Vote with your money and don’t artificially restrict where there’s zero issues. Everything works out in the end. I’d much rather transact in the US than Europe. The entire retail customer experience and return policy is unmatched. The last thing I want is for some government regulation to make it suck like Europe.

This is fun. The person you’ve replied to has stated a concrete (what they perceive to be) benefit of consumer protection regulation. One that doesn’t seem to limit choice at all, but rather improves visibility. I’m also inserting my own personal experience here. The country I live in, which isn’t in Europe, has similar regulation in place. In response you’re throwing around some vague notion of “freedom” and vague i…

Can you think of any downside of that proposal at all?

Tax inclusive total means government can screw the business and the end user and hide behind the tax inclusive price tag. Jack up the tax it seems the business is doing it.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#362

Post by ghaff »

julianeon wrote: post #359
ghaff wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I use a steno pad for that.

In my family a few people add things to the list, from different rooms even, which would be impractical if we were passing a single steno pad around.

Computer calendars and shopping lists probably make more sense as more people are involved. I just keep a single list.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#363

Post by ethbr1 »

doubled112 wrote: post #355
supportengineer wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prescription drugs have something called "NDC number" ( National Drug Codes ). What we need is NDC numbers but for consumer goods.

Like a UPC?

Are UPCs stable at scale and over time? It's been a minute since I was in retail, but I remember there being a bunch of asterisk-but's around them.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#364

Post by mihaaly »

tiltowait wrote: post #51
skhunted wrote: post #12

Alexa can add things to your shopping list but not take them off. You have to manually delete items in your shopping cart. This exemplifies why Alexa was never going to be successful. It is a user hostile experience.

How does shopping with one even work in practice? Most items I buy on Amazon require careful scrutiny to make sure I’m getting the right thing. What I want is almost never the first result. This is true even in areas that feel like they should be easy, like video games.

I'd imagine a shopping list could mean any vague things from nerby grocery (i.e milk, and if there are eggs then 6) to electronics (a sound recorder for my wife) without much specificity. To refine later or already have family understanding (eggs = organic vary large ones from black tail hens of the Fen Farm). A vocal fridge board basically. Shopping lists do not imply ordering items Right Now! Now! Neither a specific marketplace at a specific time with specific stock. Just a record about something. That the user will pick up and do something about it in a follow up step. E.g. clear a single item because fuck that sound recorder!

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#365

Post by ethbr1 »

ryandrake wrote: post #300
linsomniac wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the US with Amazon it will usually give you a price per quantity, though that can vary between "each", "oz", etc... The real issue being complained about is that there may be 10 listings in Amazon for "Tide Pods", so if you say to Alexa "Order Tide Pods" you aren't sure what you'll get, what quantity, or what price. Amazon REALLY needs to do some product normalization. It is true that if you go into a grocery…

Even if you search for the exact item, including the brand name and the size, you get pages and pages of choices, many of them just wrong. I just did a search for "sprayway glass cleaner 19 oz 1 pack". This contains all the information you need to uniquely identify a single product. Brand, Product, Size, Quantity. Yet Amazon returns 3 pages of crap , including Wrong Brand, Wrong Product, Wrong Size, and Wrong Quantit…

Pretty sure that's Amazon selling your query results, not a failure in search algorithm.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#366

Post by superfrank »

fantasybuilder wrote: post #193
superfrank wrote: post #138

Years ago, my wife did some contracting work for a team responsible for the voice assistant at one of the major tech companies. Her role required her to work with the directors and VPs and she came home one day to tell me how one of them laid out their grand vision for the product and was talking about how, not only will people use these things to buy every day items, but one day people will be making major purchases…

I think the issue of trust is a part of it, but not the most crippling when it comes to purchases. It's not that I don't trust Alexa is that I have no idea how to communicate what I need. There are thousands of options for any product - so which one should Alexa pick? How can I tell what sliced bread I want it to order without seeing the available options and prices?..

That's fair. For me at least, I see those as two sides of the same coin.

If I tell my wife, "buy me toilet paper", I trust that she knows enough about me to pick a quality product. I don't need to specify details because I trust her.

If I tell Amazon, "buy me toilet paper", I wouldn't be at all surprised if I got some garbage product from a brand I've never heard of and like you said, it isn't clear what I could do to get Amazon to do something different.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#367

Post by dyingkneepad »

UberFly wrote: post #322
sa46 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, there is an app, Chatterbaby [1], that claims to detect why a baby is crying based on the acoustic features of the cry. I've used it with middling success. That'd be a neat integration: "Alexa, why is my baby crying?" [1]: https://www.chatterbaby.org/pages/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-019-0592-4

"Your baby is crying because it doesn't like the brand of formula you purchase. We recommend Amazon Basics!"

"We recommend you try UBQTLONR this time!"

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#368

Post by LiquidPolymer »

crazygringo wrote: post #210
swatcoder wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always want to see a page with the product details and price before I click "buy". Reducing the number of clicks is not going to make me change my decision. This is compounded by the multi-headed monster that large orgs like theirs have no choice but to become. If customers could trust that every day essentials had a relatively stable price and availability pattern like they trust from their local grocery store (…

This a million times. I swear I will never understand why Amazon's supply, organization, and pricing for household goods is such a disaster. Because their experience for mainstream books is mostly perfectly fine -- there's a single listing for each book, and the price doesn't change much, just some discount from list. It works. But for things like paper towels or Tide or whatever, it's utter chaos. Multiple listings…

I gave up trying to purchase Nikon OEM batteries on Amazon. It's easy on B&H, but I cannot (or do not know how to) exclude the hundreds of cheaper knock-off batteries that are inferior in every measure. I also tried to get an OEM battery grip for my Nikon D850 - but again near impossible on Amazon. This grip is $380 from Nikon, and its possible to get a knock-off for $29. Why get the original? It increases the camera's max frame rate for stills. it is also far more durable.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#369

Post by stacktrust »

mgraupner wrote: post #120

Speaking of Alexa: Can anyone explain the thought process behind making it possible to change the volume in small increments via buttons, but not via voice command (only in 10% increments)? I only use it as an internet radio player for background music and it's extremely annoying that it can't do that.

If it's not doing what you want, you can remap any arbitrary voice command to a precise Volume setting in 1% increments, via a custom Routine.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#370

Post by ynac »

I haven't used Amazon since about 2000 (kung fu movies for my brother-in-law). My current process for shopping online cascades from the actual manufacturer / source, eBay, specialized clearinghouse (e.g. www.Biblio.com for books) and as a last resort, Costco / WalMart - these last two often have hard to find items I need quickly (or so I think - I'm looking at you Black Cuman powder).

All in all, I shop stress free in this decision tree. Oddly happy with eBay over the years. It may be because of their lack of new features and old UI that keeps things simple and quick / it just works. Yes, there are oddball things about each of these, but compared to AMZN...it's all bliss.

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